


conversations with a siren

by aletterinthenameofsanity



Series: written by the victors [2]
Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Original Work
Genre: Asexual Character, Episodic Narrative, Gen, Graphic Description, Language Barrier, Pirates, Sirens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-25 08:28:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18257546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aletterinthenameofsanity/pseuds/aletterinthenameofsanity
Summary: The first time they meet, she has just sent his entire crew to their deaths, and isn’t that a bit irritating.“Aw, bollocks,” he says, leaning over the side of the galleon and looking for the creature that had produced the song that had lured his crew overboard, “I’m gonna have to replace ‘em again.”A creature pokes its head out of the water, face blue-scaled but with strong, sharp human features. Its hair drapes like seaweed, shining like the scales of a freshly netted fish from his sister’s boat. Its eyes change with the waves, reflecting the sea itself. Its skin, which looks to be the texture of his, is fathoms-depth blue and right as he watches something flips up behind the humanoid creature, something that looks to be a fish’s tail.It cocks its head to the side, looking up at him with eyes that plead for him to drown himself in the waters below, eyes that want him to dive over and-“Nah, I’m good,” he says, and if he had to name the expression on its face he’d have to say confusion. “Don’t want to die just yet.”(An asexual pirate starts a friendship of sorts with a siren.)





	conversations with a siren

_ “Come this way, and stay your ship, so that you can listen here to our singing; for no _

_ one else has ever sailed past this place in his black ship until he has listened to the _

_ honey-sweet voice that issues from our lips.” _

 

I.

The first time they meet, she has just sent his entire crew to their deaths, and isn’t  _ that  _ a bit irritating.

“Aw, bollocks,” he says, leaning over the side of the galleon and looking for the creature that had produced the song that had lured his crew overboard, “I’m gonna have to replace ‘em again.”

A creature pokes its head out of the water, face blue-scaled but with strong, sharp human features. Its hair drapes like seaweed, shining like the scales of a freshly netted fish from his sister’s boat. Its eyes change with the waves, reflecting the sea itself. Its skin, which looks to be the texture of his, is fathoms-depth blue and right as he watches something flips up behind the humanoid creature, something that looks to be a fish’s tail.

It cocks its head to the side, looking up at him with eyes that plead for him to drown himself in the waters below, eyes that want him to dive over and-

“Nah, I’m good,” he says, and if he had to name the expression on its face he’d have to say confusion. “Don’t want to die just yet.”

It stares at him.

“Thanks, but no thanks.”

Nothing.

“Cheerio, mate. I’ve gotta find my way back.”

Splash, and it’s gone.

“Maybe next time, then?”

 

II.

“Not again, Christine,” he complains, and it looks at him. He’s back again, she’s killed another round of his crew, and he’s pretty sure greeting the siren that killed his friends is a bit off but he can’t bring himself to care.

He’s pretty sure that it’s a she, anyway. (That’s where the nickname came from, at the very least.)

She fixes him with a look and he’s pretty sure that she’s glaring at him. “Oh, don’t like the nickname? What do want me to call you?”

Nothing. She doesn’t even blink. Maybe she has a clear eyelid, just like a fish.

He points to himself. “Jasper.”

She opens her mouth and he notices the length of her canines. The analytical side of his mind wonders what kind of prey she eats to have the need for those fangs.

“Uhandre,” she says, an almost commanding tone to her river-over-gravel voice.

“Uhandre,” he repeats with a grin, and her lips shift. He thinks she’s smiling, but he’s not sure. Sirens’ only connection to humans and their customs is the boats that plow over the sirens’ homes and the looks on the humans’ faces as they fall into the water. He doesn’t know whether that shift of the lips is a smile, a cue that she is pleased, or if it’s just an action, not a  _ re _ action.

She lets out a string of notes, a melody, and he can find his name’s syllables-‘Jahs’ and ‘Pah’- mixed in. She twists the sounds so that they’re nearly garbled but he can still recognize them. Years of sailing the seas internationally has helped him interpret accents, even if that accent  _ is  _ fish.

He nods. “That’s my name.”

Now he’s really done it- her eyes are wide and she looks at him with… he wouldn’t call it confusion but it’s something along those lines. He’s not exactly sure why, though, but-

“Oh, right.” Names have power, that’s the old adage: never give your true name to a mage or a creature of the fae because it will give them strength over you. The question now is why his name didn’t help her pull him in.

He has an idea, of course- he always does- but he wonders if it’s right or not.

 

III.

“Uhandre,” he says, hanging off the side of the ship  _ this close  _ to the water because he’s kind of insane like that. “I think I know why your music doesn’t sway me.”

She looks up at him, expression almost expectant, and he answers the unspoken prompt. “Sex? Doesn’t interest me in the least.”

She’s still just staring at him, and oh, right, she can’t understand him. “Sex,” he repeats, then blows a kiss at her and winks. Then he draws a hand across his throat in what he  _ hopes  _ is the universal sign for ‘Death’ or ‘Not’.

Her nose wrinkles up as if she’s smelled something sour. “Sex,” she says, derision in her tone.

He laughs. “Yeah,  _ sex _ . Same feelings here.”

 

IV.

She floats up to the beach he’s been shipwrecked onto and he gives her a look. “Can you  _ not _ , just this once?”

“Jahs-pah?” She asks, a questioning lilt to her voice, and he sighs.

“Okay, so here’s the deal, Uhandre: I’m okay with you pulling down my crewmates- I didn’t really care about them anyway (especially George, he was a  _ horrid  _ excuse of a human being)- but did you  _ really  _ have to crash the ship?”

“Ship?” She asks, and he points at the wreckage floating down the bank.

“ _ Ship _ ,” she repeats, a satisfied tone to her voice.

“Yeah, a ship. I’m still mad at you, you know. I’ve no way to get back home now.”

“Home?” She says, and he shrugs. How does he communicate the feeling of family, or trust and love and his little brother and mother? Especially since he can’t, you know, use language or speech.

He points down to the water. “Home.” He points at his heart and where he hopes her heart is. “Home.” He smiles at her. “Home.”

She bares her fangs in a strange, feral imitation of a smile and lifts one crusty-taloned finger to point at the piece of wreckage. “Ship. Home?” Her voice lilts up in a question.

He shakes his head and points at the horizon. “Somewhere over there- that’s home.”

She lets out a strange, pensive little sound that sounds a bit like a sigh. “Home,” she says, and it sounds sorrowful.

He raises an eyebrow. “Why are you sad?” he asks, though he knows she won’t be able to understand him.

She stares at him for a minute, unblinking fish eyes starting to set him on edge just the _ slightest  _ bit, before saying, “Jahs-pah,” in a tone of voice that almost makes his name sound like a question (but not quite).

He swallows, unnerved for the first time since he’s met her, and pushes himself up and onto his feet. “Well, I’ve got to find my way home, Uhandre. See you soon!” He turns to walk around the island, determined to find materials to make some sort of raft.

“Home,” she says one last time, and he can’t quite determine the emotion that’s setting her voice to trembling. He whips back around to try and read her facial expression, but finds naught but bubbles left behind as she has sunk back into the ocean.

_ Oh, bollocks. _

 

V.

He’d always thought that he’d be the only to meet Uhandre, but now there’s someone else here, half-drunk on excess sunlight and salt water, and he’s pointing a spear at the siren. Jasper has no idea what to do, how to stop Henry from hurting her, so he shouts the first thing that comes to mind: “She’s my friend- don’t hurt her!”

Henry and Uhandre both turn to face him, confusion skittering across their faces. Yeah, it probably wasn’t his best idea- but hey, it got Henry to stop, right?

“Your  _ friend _ ?” Henry asks, practically spitting out his reply, and Jasper nods.

“Her name’s Uhandre.”

“ _ She?  _ You gave it a gender  _ and  _ a name? Are you completely  _ insane _ ? It’s a  _ monster! _ ”

Jasper raises his hands in a gesture of peace. “Whoa, man, let’s slow down now, ‘kay? Uhandre’s not a monster.”

Henry’s jaw drops. “Not a monster? This creature is nothing  _ but _ . It lured our crewmates, our  _ friends _ , to their deaths, Jasper, why can’t you see that?”

Uhandre lets out that strange gurgle-like song, with its “Jahs”s and “Pah”s intermingled with the sounds of the ocean. She sounds almost anxious, her notes having a desperate, fast edge to them. All Jasper just wants to reach out and touch her seaweed hair, to calm her in some way. He can’t use language to help console her, can’t use any kind of rational thought to explain what’s going on to her- he has no idea what to do.

“That’s just how she is, Henry,” Jasper says as he bends down next to the water, trying (and probably failing) to position his body between Henry’s spear and Uhandre’s face. “She’s a siren- that’s what they’re like.”

“And you don’t see  _ anything  _ wrong with this?” Jasper notes the incredulity in Henry’s voice, the complete and utter disbelief. Jasper’s still not sure how to respond (spending time talking to sirens- listening to the sound of your own voice, mostly- can do that to a person) but he nods. To his infinite relief, Henry lowers the spear, still looking at Uhandre. His expression of apprehension doesn’t change, but at least that blasted weapon is gone and Uhandre is safe.

( _ For now, at least,  _ that treacherous voice in the back of his mind reminds him, and he tells it to shut up.)

Henry tears his gaze away from Uhandre and looks at Jasper. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing here?” he asks. His gaze flicks back to Uhandre for a brief moment. “Harboring a monster?”

Jasper bites back a reply of  _ No, I’m not sure, not when you have a spear and you’re pointing it at her _ . Instead, he just says: “She’s not a monster, Henry.”

Henry sighs. “Fine. It’s your game, Jasper. Don’t blame me if you screw it up.”

“Game?” A familiar, river-over-gravel voice says, and Jasper looks at Uhandre. Her eyes are wide, her expression bewildered. Jasper has to wonder (not for the first time) what she’s thinking, and something about such a familiar thought makes him feel better. Sure, his life is still insane, but he’s used to this kind of chaos.

“Game,” he says, and struggles to find a way to define it. Usually he’d have the correct motions to explain the word, the correct facial expressions to associate with the term, but right now he feels dried up. Maybe it’s Henry, maybe it’s him, but he can’t be sure. He groans. He  _ hates  _ feeling uncertain. He drags his fingers through his hair, frustrated. “Game… I’m not sure how to describe it.”

“A game,” Henry says, and stops. Jasper turns to look at him and finds the other pirate staring at Uhandre. “A game is…” He smiles abruptly. “Fun.”

“Fun,” Uhandre says, rolling the word around in her mouth. “Fun,” she repeats, lips tight and pronunciation pulled back.

“Yeah, Uhandre,” Jasper joins in, finally able to smile. “Fun.” He looks back at Henry. “Thanks,” he says.

Henry’s expression is nauseated, as if he finds this situation disturbing beyond belief, but he nods. “You’re welcome.”

 

VI.

This time, Jasper knows he won’t make it much longer. There’s blood slowly trickling out of the bullet wound in his abdomen. The only thing keeping the blood from gushing out is his hands pressed against the wound. The pain is excruciating, but all he can do is stare at the red pooling over his fingers and mixing into the sea water gathered on the ship deck around him. It’s grotesquely beautiful, almost like rubies glittering on the water-

Uhandre emerges from the deep, some semblance of a frown curving her mouth. She looks at him, blinking, and he gives her a pained smile. (Well, more of a grimace, but he  _ was  _ going for a smile.)

“Looks like it didn’t end up being you doing me in,” he says, breathing heavily between words. “Royal Navy took us down.” He lifts a hand from his torso and a white flash of pain blinds him. He hisses in pain before dropping the hand back where it was, not wanting to let the blood flow out too quickly. “Damn, that hurts.”

Uhandre turns just slightly to look at the last of the dead bodies sliding down the deck into the sea. “Dead?” She asks, the word he taught her last go ‘round rumbling over her lips.

He laughs, ignoring the wave of pain that slams into him. “Burial at sea- as befitting a pirate.”

Her face doesn’t change, her eyes remaining as flat and reflective as the sea. “Pirate,” she says, voice rocking over the syllables as waves do over a shipwreck. “Jahs-pah.”

He lifts one trembling, impossibly heavy finger and points it at her. “Siren.” He smiles despite the pain. “Uhandre.”

He lets his hand fall back down on the deck, then drags his gaze to the side to look at the burning enemy ship. His ship managed to land a fatal cannon blast on the other before the sailors on both were drawn down by the sirens. It had been the first time he’d seen any sirens other than Uhandre, and he’d been too busy staring at the range of glistening blues, blacks, and greens that he’d missed the final musket shot.

_ Everyone’s dead or dying,  _ he thinks,  _ It’s only right that I finally do as well. _

“I’m going home,” he says, gray spreading across his vision.

“Home,” she repeats, and reaches forward. Perhaps going to drag him under, perhaps going to hold him. He doesn’t know. He’s never known, really. Despite the number of times he’s run into her, he still barely knows a thing about the siren.

Uhandre’s gleaming fangs are the last things Jasper Dennings ever sees.


End file.
